Page 90 of Pansies

“Maybe I just have a wide variety of interests.”

“God, Alfie, you’re so much more than you pretended to be.”

“Well. Aren’t we all?”

Alfie usually liked being in cars with people, but right now it made him feel oddly distant. The high-mounted gearbox probably didn’t help. Just touching Fen’s hand would have been like reaching over a wall. He half wished for his crappy old Nova, Fen stretched out, hot and eager, on the backseat, not somesemi-reluctant girl Alfie was doggedly trying to please. Fucking TVRs. No air bags, no anti-lock brakes, nowhere to grind and grope each other.

So he babbled instead. “Lord of the Ringsis my brother’s favourite book, so my dad recorded the whole thing off the radio and put it on tapes, and Billy played them so much they went all crackly and wrecked, so he got them for Christmas one year.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Are you kidding me? Ihatedit. I was fucking terrified. There’s some seriously fucked-up shit in that book. Not like horror-movie scary, but in this deep inside, lingering kind of way, you know?”

Fen twisted in his seat, tucking a knee under him so he could see Alfie better. “It’s meant to be a myth cycle, so it makes sense that it would inspire quite primal reactions.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“Sorry.”

“Gollum really used to freak me out.” Alfie stared through the windscreen at the wooden gate and the furrowed field that lay beyond, hazy in the buttery moonlight. “And Billy used to put his hand under the cold tap and sneak into my room and grab my feet, and go, ‘Preciousss.’ Bloody hilarious. Dad gave him what for in the end.”

That was when Alfie suddenly remembered his dad was barely his dad anymore, that they were as good as strangers because of the ways neither of them could change, so there were just these memories. He rested his head on the steering wheel. Breathed in and out, in and out. He could do that. Keep breathing.

Fen’s hand came softly down on his back, so warm. Stroked him up and down to the rhythm of his breathing. “What is it?”

Alfie sat up. Put himself back together. “Nothing.”

He was afraid Fen would push and it would all come spooling out of him: this pointless tangle of hurt and loss and bewilderment. This grief for someone he never was and something he never had. And somehow that would be worse, because he didn’t know how he was supposed to deal with it. But Fen only said, “Tell me when you’re ready,” unclipped his seat belt, and next thing Alfie knew, he had flung a leg over the gearbox and was making an impressive attempt to wriggle over to Alfie’s side of the car. He was pretty flexible for a man who had just eaten two Big Macs in a row and soon landed, inelegantly but otherwise successfully, in Alfie’s lap.

That was better.

Fen let out a careful breath. “I think I just nearly surrendered my virtue to your gearstick.”

“What virtue?” Alfie tried to get his arms round him, but it really was almost impossible to move.

“Don’t get sassy with me, Alfie Bell.”

Which made him smile a bit, just as Fen kissed him. Light at first, just the drag of his mouth over Alfie’s, but then Alfie arched up and took him deeper, and it quickly got all messy, a damp tangle of tongues and breath, full of Fen’s frantic little moans.

It shouldn’t have been this exciting: two grown men who’d already fucked going at it like teenagers in the driver’s seat of a car, unreachable, fully covered erections knocking roughly against each other, the back of Alfie’s hand catching on the indicator light, and Fen arching into the horn every time Alfie did something he liked. Which, apparently, was most things.

Except it was. It was exciting in all the ways it had never been before, like he was finally getting something, or understanding something, that a bunch of other people had already found,maybe in this exact same spot.

He’d had no idea there was this much kissing in the world. That you could kiss, and kiss, and kiss, and not run out of ways to kiss. Like a Fibonacci sequence of touching, increasing always in complexity, but never breaking the boundary of their two joined mouths.

Somewhere, out there in the dark, was the echo of himself. If only he could go back in time.You’ll find it, he’d say,you’ll get it.

But the years behind him felt like a desert. So perhaps it was better the boy he used to be didn’t know what Alfie knew now. That chance and random circumstance would bring him here, and to a gift, infinitely precious, from a man who had no reason to give him anything.

A glare of orange light as a car raced past, tooting at them—Get a room, perhaps, or evenGood on you, mate.

He managed to yank open Fen’s jeans. Shove a hand inside, find his cock. Fen moaned into his mouth and flailed, hitting the horn again, and the windscreen wipers too. And Alfie crushed him against the steering wheel, kissing him, working him, until he cried out helplessly and came in an uncontrolled rush. Kind of everywhere.

Breathless, practically boneless, Fen fell against Alfie’s shoulder, and Alfie sort of nuzzled him clumsily with his chin and jaw because it was the only way he could get to touch him.

“God. Alfie. That nearly went in my eye.”

“Then that’s probably the only place it didn’t go.” Alfie kissed the edge of Fen’s ear and, when he turned his head, his kiss-swollen mouth again. “I think you’ve got some in your hair.”

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